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With Simona De Silvestro

With Danica Patrick driving in Nascar full time, Simona De Silvestro is the top woman of IndyCar racing. De Silvestro, a 24-year-old from Switzerland, was trying to qualify this weekend for her fourth Indianapolis 500, which takes place next Sunday. She was rookie of the year in her first Indy 500 in 2010, with a 14th-place finish. Four races into the 2013 season, she is ninth in the IndyCar Series standings after three top-10 finishes. This is her first season with KV Racing Technology.

Q. What did you think the first time you went to Indianapolis Motor Speedway?

A. The first time I went there was 2007, and I thought, Man, these cars are fast. I was driving in a smaller category, Atlantics. I couldn’t imagine doing that, and then a few years later, I was there.

Q. How did you get started in racing?

A. I started when I was 6 years old in Switzerland, in go-karts. It’s funny, when I see a picture of me in my first go-kart, I always tell my parents that they were crazy. My helmet is too big. How did they trust me to drive around? I was playing different sports like tennis and soccer, but racing was always what I wanted to do and I stuck with it.

Q.Is open-wheel racing popular in Switzerland?

A. We have a Formula One team, but actually racing is banned in Switzerland. It’s kind of weird, but luckily Switzerland is really small, so you can get to Italy and France, who are really huge into racing. My dad would take me every weekend or Wednesday afternoon, and we’d go go-karting. In Italy, go-karting is huge because all the chassis manufacturers and all that are there. I did 10 years of go-karting. Then, when I was 16, I started in cars.

A. It was just with me. I can’t remember when it was I decided that I’m going to be a racecar driver. My dad used to say that as a baby, I was only quiet when racing was on TV, so I think I had the bug really early. I was pretty good at tennis, but when I was racing was when I had the most fun.

A. You have to be good in cardio because your heart rate is between 160 to 180 for two hours. And then we don’t have power steering, and the steering wheel is really heavy. You train a lot of cardio and also weights like shoulders, your neck and things like that. The funny thing too is that we’re racecar drivers, but during the winter, we feel like we’re just spending time at the gym because testing is so limited. You actually never get to do your sport. You do so much more work outside of the racecar. Myself, during the winter, I’m like, “What am I doing in this gym all the time?” Because you never get to drive. I want to go drive.

Photo

Simona De Silvestro.Credit
Ringo H.W. Chiu/Associated Press

Q. How are you driving on regular streets?

A.I’m pretty mellow, actually. Drive the speed limit. Q.How do you think you have to improve?

A. In Europe, we don’t have any ovals. When I got to IndyCar, it was the first time I got to an oval. So when you’re from Europe, oval racing, you’re not really sure about it because you don’t know what it is. Everything you know on a road course, you can’t use it on an oval. So when people come into IndyCars, they have to relearn all these things. It takes a little time to get used to these ovals.

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Oh, on TV it looks so easy because you’re going in circles. But the problem on an oval is when you do a mistake, it usually hurts. When you’re a rookie, you’re learning all these things. It takes a lot of time to go through the phases. It also shows that the people who are usually winning the ovals and people who had been running on it for a lot of years and get the experience from it. For me, this year at the 500 is our first oval. It’s going to be real interesting. I’ve had four years to learn all these things. I have a lot of confidence. On the ovals, I feel like I still have a lot to learn, especially this year with joining KV, I have a teammate in Tony Kanaan who has run for many years. It’s exciting. I think I can learn a lot from him.

Q.What do you think of the adjustments in the cars?

A. They came out with the DW12, which is a new chassis. You have to adjust to it. It’s produced such good racing. We’ve had four races so far, and it’s been crazy. The first 24 people can win the race any given weekend. I really like the new car.

Q. You play fantasy football? I’ve been struggling a bit. I don’t know all the players, so it’s hard especially when playing with people who know everything about the game. The team got me into it.

A. You play golf. Have you always golfed?

I played like twice a year, and then the last two years, I started to play a little bit more. As a racecar driver, you’re so busy, so it’s nice to take four hours and chill on the golf course and be outside. I can drive the ball really far, but after that, it’s kind of miserable. It is frustrating.

Golf is such a weird sport. You can have awesome round and you can go play the next day and be miserable. Sometimes I play bad and won’t touch my clubs for a month. I play in Indy a lot. In U.S., there are so many courses.

Q. What do you miss most about Switzerland?

A. The chocolate. The food. Actually, the bread is my biggest thing. It’s really hard to find really good bread over here. When I go home, that’s the first thing I’m looking forward to, a piece of bread.

A version of this article appears in print on May 19, 2013, on Page SP8 of the New York edition with the headline: From Switzerland to Indy, With Need for Speed, and Bread. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe